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For Owen, 6 1/2, 2017 was the year of graphic novels. His favorites were all the books by Raina Telgemeier, the Dog Man books, and the Magic Treehouse books.

Rosie, nearly nine, had several favorite series this year, including Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, and the Mysterious Benedict Society. She also loved all the books by Brian Selznick, and Kate DiCamillo's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and The Tale of Despereaux.Snow and Rose by Emily Winfield Martin gets top award for illustrations.

Jack reads the most mind-bending books. His favorites of 2017 includeIan Bogost - Alien Phenomenology: What it's like to be a thingThe Essential Rumi (Colman Banks translation)Donna Haraway - Staying with the TroubleCraig Thompson - HabibiBrian Massumi - The Politics of Affect

Most profoundIncarnadine by Mary SzybistSpiritual Friendship by Wesley HillShalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision by Randy WoodleyHoly the Firm by Annie Dillard

Most MovingWonder by R.J. PalacioThe Hate U Give by Angie ThomasGod Laughs and Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right by David James DuncanWalking with Ruskin by Robert CordingThe Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

A spot of something good in the world today: the songs we've loved in our eleventh year of marriage. Jack says that this is our slowest playlist yet. Maybe we're getting old. Maybe our lives are moving so fast that we need something to be slow (as Jason Martin sings on track one). Or maybe time running out is a gift, and as another Jason (Isbell) sings, we will treasure each other and we will work hard till the end of our shifts precisely because we know that our days are numbered. That song (track 4) is without a doubt my current favorite of these, but I hope they will all bring a little joy to your week.

I'm writing from the balcony of my little monastic-like cell on the campus of St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I'm here for my MFA residency, my third of five. We are studying Elizabeth Bishop and Constantine Cavafy and Willa Cather, and we are writing and revising, and we are sharing our stories, and we are taking long walks on the trails behind the university and into tow.n for food and drinks with sage and pinon and chile. On our off day, I visited Bandelier National Monument, and hiked to the cave dwellings of the Pueblo people and felt like a tiny speck in the universe and in eternity.

This week marks the six month anniversary of my book's publication. I've heard from many of you (and will respond if I haven't yet, with apologies) about how my story has spoken to you of yours. I'm grateful to you for reading.

A few quick updates: my marvelous writers' group has started a little monthly newsletter. If you'd like a peek into our daily conversations, our varied paths to publishing, and the ways we think about the writing life, you can subscribe here. The next issue is coming in the next few days, and it contains a very happy announcement.

I've also added a Speaking link to my site here. Check it out and let me know if I will be seeing you in the next few months!

This summer was Jack's 3rd of 3 summers doing PhD coursework in Pennsylvania. It's felt long and short. The kids and I tried to fill the hole in our hearts with traveling - Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, California, Missouri, Pennsylvania. Oh, and I got a new tattoo.

This summer, I read a bunch of formulaic and very enjoyable books by Jenny Colgan. If you want to read about a British/Scottish woman, approximately age 34, who experiences a personal/professional heartbreak/setback, and moves to a charming small town and starts over by opening her own cafe/cupcakery/candy store/bakery/bookstore and possibly finds a little love on the way, then check her out.

I also read middle grade and YA, because along with British chick lit, they are perfect summer genres. I loved Wonder by RJ Palacio and Gem and Dixie by Sara Zarr, and I also enjoyed The Greenglass House by Kate Milford and We Are Okay by Nina LaCoeur. Oh, and I read books about place, because as always, I'm obsessed with the interplay of rootedness and wanderlust. I liked At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider, and can only give partial recommendations for Who's Your City by Richard Florida and New Slow City by William Powers.

I watched all three seasons of Madam Secretary on Netflix, because sometimes you need to escape to a world, however unrealistic, where they are politicians you can believe in. I also really enjoyed GLOW and cannot say enough good about season two of Master of None.

As for music, next week I'll post the eleventh anniversary playlist. It's a good one.

And the only movie I got to see this summer was Wonder Woman. I enjoyed it.

The MFA means I'm not writing as much online or even for publication right now, but I think - I hope - good things are coming slowly. In the meantime, thanks for sticking around.

Hi. Hello there. Howdy. I'm back. Or I'm dropping in. Here's the thing: I've been releasing a book, working 30+ hours week, being a grad student, and taking care of two kids, plus or minus a few other things, and blogging has not been a priority. And probably won't be. But you know I always like to show up for Leigh's What I'm Into link-ups when I can, and today I can.

Here's what I've been into over the last few months:

TelevisionNot much exciting in my television world right now. Jack and I have been working our way through season one of The Leftovers on DVD, but it gives me bad dreams, so. SO we started re-watching Friday Night Lights on DVD instead. When I'm folding laundry, I watch Jane the Virgin (RIP Michael - I was shocked) and Switched at Birth (RIP show). Together, Jack and I also have been into PBS's Victoria; the soapy teen Riverdale (Jughead 4-ever); Big LIttle Lies (Riverdale for adults?); and The Good Fight (The Good Wife spin-off).

I finally read my friend Wesley's book Spiritual Friendship, and I dog-eared that puppy up. So much that rang true to my own experience of friendship and loneliness. So much goodness.

When I was on Whidbey Island earlier this month, I heard poet Mary Szybist read, and fell in love, so I immediately ordered her book Incarnadine and read it cover to cover (and I don't do that often with poetry). Szybist is Catholic, and this collection is inspired by the Annunciation. It is not for the faint of heart.

My airplane books for that trip to Whidbey were The Mothers, a novel by Brit Bennett and The Refugees, a collection of short stories by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Both were haunted by voices from the past.

On Whidlbey, we studied Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm. After reading it three times, I loved it, and to study it right near where it was written made the experience even richer.

My other favorite book of poetry this winter was Naomi Shihab Nye's 19 Varieties of Gazelle. I heard her on On Being with Krista Tippet, and then serendipitously found this book in a used bookstore in Fort Wayne. When we had poetry chapel at Taylor in March, I read this one from the stage.

MusicI'm making a playlist of my current favorite songs to share with Mollie and Anna when we take our road trip to Memphis this June (PS: our 20th friendiversary is coming up! November 15), and you are in luck, because I am going to share it with you too. It is under construction (and probably NSFW).

If I were to highlight a few favorites, I'd probably say to check out the full albums from Julie Byrne and Michael Nau.

PodcastsI'm loving Truth's Table, which is hosted by Ekemini Uwan, Michelle Higgins, and Christina Edmondson, who are "Midwives of culture for grace and truth." (In fact, I nominated in to be on the Christ and Pop Culture list of the 25 best things of 2017 - you can hear me defend it against video games and anime on the CAPC 25 here.)

I listened to all of S-Town, and mostly loved it, though my feelings are complicated. If you haven't heard of this one, which is like a nonfiction novel, here's the producer's description: "JOHN DESPISES HIS ALABAMA TOWN AND DECIDES TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. HE ASKS a reporter to investigate the son of a wealthy family who’s allegedly been bragging that he got away with murder. But then someone else ends up dead, sparking a nasty feud, a hunt for hidden treasure, and an unearthing of the mysteries of one man’s life."If you did listen, check out this article by my friend Jessica for The Atlantic: Was the Art of S-Town Worth the Pain?

As for life this semester, I helped take a great group of first-year Honors students to the Bahamas for a course on small-island sustainability (this sounds ridiculously awesome, I know, but consider: we stayed in bunk beds, ate camp food, and toured waste management plants). I wrote about my favorite part of that experience for Elisa Morgan's blog, and I have a longer piece about it hopefully coming out elsewhere soon.

My buddy DL Mayfield came to speak in chapel, we took an epic writers' retreat with our sisters of holy mischief, and then I spoke in chapel. A little later I had my official book release party as part of Taylor's Making Lit Conference.

And then I went to Whidbey Island for an MFA residency, and it was quite nearly perfect.

Jack ran another marathon.

I helped build the new issue of Relief Journal, which will be coming out in the next month or so (and it's going to be amazing! Also check out the beautiful new website).

Easter reminded me of the beauty of what we have here in central Indiana.

but I learned that most things were a bit more complicated than I'd thought.

I wasn't allowed to re-enter a country that had begun to feel like home because the authorities feared my religion, and felt that I might pose a political threat (sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it?). Others faced persecution because of the gospel I had shared with them. It felt like my fault.

I wondered if God was good.

I found out that I was more loved than I had ever understood.

And this is the story I share in my book. But it's the kind of story that most of us have - about the moment when your childlike faith became complicated, the moment you realized that your perspective on the world was woefully limited, the moment when God's grace became real to you.

If you have a story, will you share it? And if you want to hear the rest of mine, here it is: cultural critique, love story, travelogue, spiritual coming of age. Thanks for celebrating its release today with me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 18th chapter of the gospel of John this week. It's the story of Jesus being arrested, but in John's careful writerly hands, it becomes a story about truth.

First, you’ve got Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, approached by Judas and some soldiers. When he tells them the truth about who he is, they’re literally struck by it: he says, “I am he,” (echoing God’s revelation of himself to Moses as the I AM) and they draw back and fall to the ground (John 18:6). The truth is powerful.

The soldiers arrest Jesus and take him in for questioning, pretending that they want to get to the truth. Meanwhile, Peter gets grilled by a servant girl, and lies about his identity. Cut to inside: Jesus tells the high priest that he has always “spoken openly" and “said nothing in secret”. He is struck for telling the truth. Cut to the courtyard: here is Peter lying again.

Finally Jesus is brought before Pilate, and in answering Pilate’s questions, Jesus says, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). Jesus could have gone in a dozen directions here. He could have said he was born to bring salvation, or that his purpose in coming to earth was to reconcile all things to God. Those would have been true. He chose a different emphasis. He emphasized truth.

Then Pilate: “What is truth?”

What is truth?

Truth is dangerous: it can knock you flat on you back, it can get you in trouble with the authorities. Truth, John has already told us in this gospel, can set us free (8:32). And truth is a person, Jesus, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (14:6).

My friend Alan Noble says that our country is in the midst of “an epistemological crisis.” We’ve been sucked in by fake news sites, willingly sharing articles that fit our confirmation bias without stopping to check the facts. We’ve elected a president who lies compulsively. All politicians lie - all humans lie! - but the rate at which and the way in which President Trump and his administration lie is unique. Calling them "alternative facts" does not change what they are; a lie by any other name stinks just as much. And at the same time as Trump lies, he is actively attempting to discredit and silence all other media, calling journalists liars if they write stories he doesn't like. He is trying to create a sense among the general public that certain things are just unknowable.

Regardless of what you believe about Trump's policies and positions, his attitude toward truth is deeply dangerous and frightening.

What can we do to subversively work for Truth in the age of Trump?

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s small book Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies offers some helpful ways forward. As lovers of Jesus, we are lovers of truth. We believe in being careful with our words. Here’s what she suggests we can do to steward our words well:

1. Love words–“We care for words when we use them thankfully, recognizing in each kind a specific gift . . .”

2. Tell the truth–Be precise, free of hyperbole. Be careful to say what you mean and be sensitive to how it will be heard.

3. Don’t tolerate lies–Confront lies by being wise as serpents and harmless as doves. Do so in love, in truth, and in humility.

4. Read well–Reading is a morally consequential act. Reading is “manna for the journey,” and a tangible, profound way to love God with our minds.

5. Stay in conversation–Conversation is a communal act; a mutual commitment to stick with the topic and one another and see it to the other side. Don’t flee when the conversation gets hard. Stay. Be curious about other points of view.

7. Love the long sentence–In an age of 140 characters, to persevere through the long sentence cultivates a mental grit that allows us to sustain thought beyond the clickbait headlines of our day.

8. Practice poetry–Poetry draws us into paradox; it draws us into play. All the while we are stretched and challenged to understand the complexity of life. You can’t speed read a poem. You must sit with it for awhile.

9. Attend to translation–Translation considers for context and culture. Translation takes care to be understood amid difference. It’s an effort to communicate effectively with others.

10. Play–Play with words.”To play is to claim our freedom as beloved children of God and to perform our most sacred tasks–what we are called to do in the world–with abandon and delight, free to experiment and fail, free to find out and reconsider . . .”

11. Pray–Prayer reminds us of who God is and who we are. It uses the gift of language to commune with the Giver of language. It instills a respect of language and from where it derives.

12. Cherish silence–Silence is not the absence of noise, but “a place we enter.” It’s not empty. Rather, silence is FULL. Silence can restore our hearts, minds, souls and bodies to be more caring with our words.

In a time of such great political and cultural upheaval, it feels strange to be touting my book, which releases on Wednesday. But in its own way, this book is the result of me caring for words: thinking deeply about the Christian rhetoric around missions, sharing my own story, and rethinking the way that I talk about God and faith. I believe that creating something beautiful and true is one of the best acts of resistance we have against a culture of lies, and this book is my attempt to do that.

And I hope that you will join me by sharing YOUR stories as part of my book launch celebration next week. There are two ways that you can play along - I want to share them now so that you'll have time to think about how you want to get involved.

1.The Instagram share! (Feb 1)Post a picture of yourself when you wanted to change the world. For the caption, write a note to yourself at that time, or write about one thing you know now that you wish you had known then. Use the hashtag #dangerousterritorybook

2. The blog carnival! (Feb 1-7) If you have a blog, join the dangerous territory link-up! Write a post using one of the following prompts. Here on my blog I will post links to all of your posts, and I’ll share them on social media. This link-up is open to everyone, so please invite friends to join, too!

Write about one of your own “misguided quests”

Or write about how a cross-cultural interaction (or a relationship with someone different from you) widened your perspective on the world

Or write about a time you experienced God’s grace in a fresh way

I can't wait to hear your stories so that we can learn from each other about how God is at work.

My children sit in the back of my 2003 Honda, eating pretzels and cheese nips and raisins and m&ms, talking about their dreams. At night they stay up too late reading, fall asleep under down comforters.

In Aleppo this morning, hungry children watch their homes burn, see their friends shot.

In Aleppo this morning, 100 children were trapped in a building under heavy attack and some 80 civilians are thought to have been executed.

Today I feel like a failure. Nearly 25 years reporting war crimes has added up to nothing. We said "never again." What happened? #Aleppo

Every year I like to share a few of my favorite books and albums (here's last year's list). This year the whole family wants to play along!

Owen (age 5 1/2)Owen can read - he likes BOB books and National Geographic early readers. But his favorite books of the year include books we read together and an...encyclopedia of sorts.

1- I'm A Frog (a Piggie and Elephant Book) by Mo WillemsThe Piggie and Elephant books are perfect for preschoolers and early readers, but I think they're also some of my favorite books to read aloud, because they are hilarious.

Her favorite albums this year have been the soundtrack to Hamilton and Red by Taylor Swift.

Jack's favorite books of the year reflect his research interests, as he's spent most of his reading time with PhD work. (Sorry about this adorable/hilarious picture. It helps balance the ridiculous titles you're about to read.)

His favorite albums of the year were David Bowie's Blackstar, Rihanna's Anti, and -- when our friend Julia got a job in music journalism this year, she told us that she felt like she needed to educate herself about music that was released before the year of her birth. What year were you born? we asked. And that is how Jack got started listening to basically every album that came out in 1994.

As for me, this summer I started an MFA program, and some of the best books I've read have been for that. Here's my top three works of non-fiction:

1. Citizen by Claudia RankineA genre-bending work, this book uses poetry, nonfiction, and modern art script. Rankine gives readers a glimpse of her life as a black woman in contemporary America, and the view she offers is powerful and moving. Her memory of the microagressions she’s swallowed rather than responded to - and the anger that’s built up - and the sense that ignoring microagressions (and other mistreatment) is what it means for her to be a good American citizen — these are the themes she explores over the seven sections of the book.

2. Safekeeping by Abigail ThomasI don’t know that I’ve ever read in memoir such a complex, nuanced portrait of human relationship and love as I’ve read in this book, which is composed of very short vignettes in non-chronological order, and is absolutely compelling.

3. Dakota by Kathleen NorrisThis was a re-read, but it had been over a decade -- and I'm not sure I actually finished it the first time around. This memoir about life in the rural plains speaks presciently to our contemporary political moment. It's meticulously researched, metaphorically resonant, and spiritually rich.

3. The Confessions of X by Suzanne Wolfein this gripping, beautifully written historical novel, Suzanne Wolfe brings the ancient city of Carthage to life, immersing readers in the experiences that shaped the theology of Augustine of Hippo.

My favorite albums to listen to this year were the soundtrack to Hamilton, Rihanna's Anti, and Sandra McCracken's God's Highway.

If you're not signed up to get my newsletter, be sure to sign up today - tomorrow I'll be sending out the link to a giveaway for a couple of excellent 2016 books as well as a copy of our church's Advent journal, which includes my original essay "Song Dedications" and one of Jack's poems (or you can buy an ebook version here - all proceeds go to the work of the church). In that newsletter, I'll also share my Christmas playlist and a tiny bit of unpublished writing.